Dump Truck
Sometimes it feels like a dump truck pulled into your yard while you were sunbathing and decided to unload a bed of sand onto you. You became the sandcastle. Your day became the shells washing back out to sea. The seagulls picked nits out of your hair. You submerged yourself endlessly so the dream would stop. You woke up.
Everything is a matter of perception. A donut can be a treat or a punishment, and sometimes both. The fact that a fried circle of dough became a breakfast option still defies logic. Donut cereal is a tragic mind fuck. Something akin to Fritos Pie. These things should not go together, yet they do. And we eat them.
I saw a urinal planter on Instagram today, from that account that trolls Facebook Marketplace for oddities. It looked almost comforting to pee into, even though there was a plant in there. I think you would have to dare me not to. It’s too perfect. I went to a double feature with my son a couple weeks ago. We saw Backrooms and Obsession. Talk about a day. But when I was in the bathroom, peeing into the urinal, I really wondered why every men’s bathroom in the world doesn’t have dividers between urinals. The cost can’t be that much. It’s terribly uncomfortable to pee next to another man without a divider.
This is a good time to tell you that Cinnamon Toast flavored Chex Mix fucks. It literally does. Especially when you are driving and shoveling it carefully into your mouth by using the bag because you don’t want to keep having to wipe the cinny dust on your real estate agent showing shorts. Fucks.
I guess this essay could just as well have been called Bulldozer. My dad had a bulldozer in our backyard. I used to go climb into it, which wasn’t that easy when I was little. You literally had to climb to get in there. The keys were probably in it. I never tried to turn it on. I knew better. But sometimes I just wanted to bulldoze some shit, at least in my mind.
Chappaqua is a ridiculous name for a town, but it actually looks pretty cool when you look at it. You should spend more time observing things you never observe. Like how some words look so stupid. Who decided to spell rhythm like this? Dumb. My friend posted a picture of protein Doritos in her Instagram Stories yesterday. This shit is out of control. Protein Doritos are not good for you. Not everything needs 10g of protein now. Food companies are the fucking worst.
I got a haircut the other day. Dan, my barber, always shows me the back of my head when he’s done. I always tell him that I don’t care what it looks like, as if I am going to say, “No, dude. You need to start all over.” Really, it’s because it’s the only time I see a glimpse of balding. And then I feel old. Handsome, with a fatter face than I would like, but old.
Origami is a cool word. After I wrote that, I thought of the words, originally and orgy. That probably tells you more than you need to know. I am strange. An odd bird wandering through a brackish marsh with a notebook in his hand, tracking the data of nature and life with a Bic pen that you have to scribble three times just to get it to work.
This is my first new essay on my new writing site. It feels good to be free again. Medium never captured me, but it held me. I have posted thousands of essays and poems on Medium over the years. I made a lot of friends there. But it’s deader than the undercarriage of a 1930’s jalopy that has been sitting out in the desert sun for fifteen years and eight minutes.
What about a dump truck of water? It’s going to 100 degrees in New Jersey again today, and I think it would be cool to Flashdance a dump truck of water on to myself while sitting in a beach chair, wearing a blue UCLA tank top that I had when I was a teenager. I told you, I am weird. I think obtusely on purpose. My brain is not a straight line, even in business. I can fit a triangle peg in a square hole by using angles. More in life is about angles than you think.
© Jonathan Greene, July 3, 2026.
